May 5th, 2014

The spire of Holy Trinity Church seen from Cressingham Gardens. Split level houses on Hardel Walk. Wild flowers growing adjacent to Brockwell Park on the site of The Big Dig, a London wide project for enthusiastic urban gardeners.

November 13th, 2017

I was planning to write this up and perhaps one day I will. But the closer I look the more the subject grows and the less I actually know about the district. You can see my walk above and I met some interesting people but life is taking over and this will have to wait. Likewise Byker. So I’ll leave these notes here for anybody else planning to go.

November 10th, 2017

For clarity I am not opposing the views of the London Fire Brigade that sprinklers save lives, and indeed I would not dream of disagreeing with that simple fact, but in this specific case of concrete high rise tower blocks built to contain a fire inside one flat then sprinklers are not required in my opinion. Once the occupants are outside the flat and have closed the front door the fire will be contained.

Conclusion

For safety in a tower block circulate hot water from a ground floor boiler room – not gas to individual boilers.

November 2nd, 2017

IKEA MetroCentre Gateshead has two dwelling layouts the first 25m2 the second 35m2 of which the latter looks bearable habitable space for a single adult. This is the 25m2.

Let’s deal with the inadequate dwelling first. Bear in mind that both dwellings are over furnished because they are laid out in a shop. At least this one (25m2) has the plumbing in one duct i.e. kitchen and bathroom adjacent, not the plumber’s nightmare of the 35m2 which has them on opposite sides of the dwelling.

The Architects Who Made London with Maxwell Hutchinson:

October 27th, 2017

By all means go to that page by clicking the image above but if you don’t have access to iTunes on your device or you prefer to simply download the file without going via iTunes then use the list linked below.

The Dispossessed

Housing build quality

. . . It is shocking to think that despite the universal condem- nation of the majority of social housing output in the 60s and 70s, professionals are still pushing for quantity over quality . . . read on

Micro flats Oldham

Work has begun to build 142 self-contained “micro” apartments — some as small as 18 square metres — in Oldham town centre . . . read on

Tiny flats

There is a new set of flats . . . daubed in tiny lettering below one of the artist impressions "(Flat Shown is actual size)" . . . read on

High rise retrofit

The deep plan organizes small single aspect units with larger numbers of internal rooms. This subsequently leads to a lack of daylight and cross ventilation for the majority of the flats.
read article